The Largest Red

“How do you do life without a coach?” Thoughts as of 6/12/24 This question comes from a recent conversation with a friend contemplating life post athletics. For people not involved in athletics past a certain level, this may not resonate. However, I think that the longer one stays within a sport, and the more of one’s time that sport takes up (highly correlated I’d imagine), this will likely strike a chord.  Further, I think it is more of a commentary on the schooling system writ large rather than something narrowly confined to athletics. The lesson should ring true to anyone finding themselves in the midst of uncertainty, but an example will be helpful in illustrating the point. Speaking from my own experience, I had always been involved in competitive sports. I started at probably 5 years old and continued until I was 22. The myriad benefits of athletics have been widely touted my whole life, such as increased discipline, teamwork, leadership, etc. but I think that there is a som...

The Battle Against Biology and Evolution Thoughts as of 6/6/24 Something that has come up again and again in my quest for physical fitness and happiness is the unavoidable fact that we are products of evolution and at the mercy of our biology. The problem is, we have escaped the food chain and these systems no longer serve us. The more you learn about the processes of the body whether it be chemical balances, circadian rhythms, impacts of light, exercise, and food, etc. etc. there are evolutionary reasons why things are the way that they are. We are beings that are optimized to survive and reproduce and things that serve that purpose give us good feelings and things that do not, do not. This does not lead to optimum behavior in today’s world. One example of circadian rhythms and our biological clocks is in the impact of light on biological processes. If it were up to us, we would probably want to divorce these clock signals from light exposure so as to be able to stay up late using art...

You Are What You Eat - Literally! Thoughts as of 5/30/2024 These thoughts have been percolating for a few months now since I first heard the concept mentioned on a podcast. It seems so incredibly simple and obvious, and yet, after 25 years of living, I was and am blown away. We have all heard the saying, “You are what you eat.” It sounds trite and meaningless, and until I heard it expressed in this specific way, I dismissed it as nothingness. In fact, I imagine most people do the same, and I am not sure the originator of the quote intended the meaning in the way I now interpret it. As an athlete, I would always hear analogies along the lines of treating your body like a racecar. You need to take care of the racecar to make sure it is operating at peak efficiency. When it came to food, this was more so fuel for the racecar, or gasoline. You would not just put any old thing into a racecar and expect it to perform at its best. Similarly, as an athlete who wants to perform at a high level,...

Ego - Lifting and Otherwise Thoughts as of 4/15/2024 These thoughts have been percolating for some time, and there are many more illustrative examples outside of lifting, but I feel that the point is easier made with lifting. In terms of religious or philosophical concepts, I have a lot of work to do to understand what exactly the ego is, and what exactly pride is, but I know they are both very dangerous. C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity made me think about pride more seriously for the first time. All of the quotes about pride being the worst sin, or compared to the devil himself I was able to brush past as hyperbole, but upon reflection, it makes sense. Similarly, ego I have never taken all that seriously; however, books like Ryan Holiday’s Ego is the Enemy, and other schools of thought that warn of the dangers of ego have been a part of my knowledge consumption over the past few years. One of the catalysts for taking these concepts more seriously was an instance in the weight room and...

Craving Thoughts as of 3/31/24 One of my biggest challenges lately in my fitness journey has been on the diet side. It is not so much that I am eating unhealthy foods, it is more so resisting the urge to splurge and eat too much. “All things in moderation.” This has gone as far as me putting a live “days since binge” day counter on my phone. Today I am up to 7 days, a record since inception. Listening to an episode of the Huberman Lab podcast recently, he mentioned a lesson he learned related to overcoming addiction. It went something like “If you can tolerate craving for a second, you can do it for another second, and then another.” In designing the architecture of my days, I have taken that principle seriously. Chunking the days into different parts so that the stress or boredom of work is less likely to get the best of me. In deciding the topic for this post earlier in the week, I did not intend to write about eating at all. Rather, I was thinking about the Buddhist view of craving,...

My Favorite Form of Procrastination Thoughts as of 3/26/2024 It is hard to sit down and do the work. The book The War of Art lays out this difficulty quite well, labeling it “the resistance.” I have been able to use the concept of resistance as a perfect signal as to whether or not something is worth doing, in that the more I dance around and avoid sitting down and moving towards a solution or putting in the work, the more important it is. Unfortunately, my favorite methods of procrastination are considered colloquially to be productive. Reading books, listening to podcasts/audiobooks, conversations with old friends. These are all great in their own right, but when they are used to avoid other more important tasks or thinking, then their utility diminishes. I struggle with action. It is much easier for me to read a million and one self-help books, learn about psychological principles, or the latest discoveries in health and wellness than it is to take those very same lessons and apply ...

Language Thoughts as of 3/21/2024 A recurrent thought as of late has been the limitations of language in communication and in understanding more broadly. People often speak of certain words or expressions in other languages that do not have an equivalent in English. Just this morning in an audiobook the author mentioned how “casa” in Spanish is different from the word “home” in English. While true, I believe that the problem lies a bit deeper, and is more prevalent than we might realize. I would argue that it is unlikely that the word “home” in English even means the same thing to two different native English speakers. There is an unnavigable gap between the thoughts in my mind, the words on this page, the words you read, and the thoughts that come from them in your mind. I have found so often that arguments on the news, online, or in the media generally stem around differences in the definitions of terms rather than the substance of arguments. There are a plethora of videos online lam...

Consistency Thoughts as of 3/19/2024  The irony of missing two weeks of so-called “weekly” posting and then coming back with a post of this title and theme is not lost on me. One of the first books in my recent reading journey which was revitalized during the pandemic after lying dormant for almost a decade was Principles by Ray Dalio. This was my first foray into Dalio and his systems at Bridgewater, and as I entered the workforce for the first time in any serious fashion, it struck me as profound and yet an incredibly sensible set of guidelines in theory - whether or not they worked in practice was to be seen - but inspired hope nonetheless. A guest speaker during summer football camp in college recommended that we list out our values explicitly and commit to them. This was a shortcut way to make decisions in life in that you could simply look to your values and see if a choice aligns with those values or not. These two core themes have been percolating in the back of my mind sin...

Simple vs. Easy Thoughts as of 3/3/2024 Funnily enough, the first time I heard the distinction between simple and easy was in a film shown in a theology class in high school. The movie had religious implications and the lesson taught by this particular scene has been lost on me, but it has been, and will continue to be quite profound. In order to discuss the distinction in more detail, I think that it would be helpful to define both terms and the distinction at the outset. In this context, simple can be defined as a synonym for uncomplicated, whereas easy can be defined as a synonym for unchallenging. Something that is simple is not difficult to grasp intellectually, while something that is easy is not difficult to execute. Once this difference is made apparent, it starts to reveal itself across many different areas in life. The difference between words and deeds, thoughts and actions, “do as I say, not as I do.” One such instance is investing. When I first got my job at a hedge fund, ...

Limbo A short reflection this weekend as I have had a mentally chaotic week. Thoughts as of 2/25/24. Unfortunately, more aspects of my life have been in limbo over the past few months than I would like. I suppose in an ideal world, everything would be more clear-cut and well-defined, but perhaps that would not be an ideal world after all. We live in a world of uncertainty where the only constant is change; however, I feel like the primary buckets of my life experience across living, working, and relationships, have been far more uncertain than they should be at a steady state. This uncertainty is particularly debilitating because it makes things difficult to enjoy in the present moment, and also brings with it an immense resistance to confronting the problems and formulating concrete solutions or paths out. For the former point, I have likened it to a sword of Damocles in that at any given moment from week to week, the rug could be pulled out from under me. At least in the relationship...

Put on Trial A powerful idea I have started to incorporate to my decisions. Thoughts as of February 17th, 2024. Within the past year, I heard on a podcast a quote from Jimmy Carter: “If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” My first reaction to the quote was to think along religious lines and what I would say my religious beliefs are at this moment in time. Raised Catholic and going to Catholic school for K-12, would I still call myself a Catholic? Would a jury convict me? On what evidence? After the initial reaction, it quickly expanded to other parts of my life. I say I want to lose weight. Oh yeah? Then why are you eating a full bag of tortilla chips before bed? Why aren’t you getting your steps in every day? These are good questions, and I think a great point. Fortunately for me, I have been able to lose a bunch of weight after my football career. Peak to trough was approaching 100 lbs without being horrendously out of shape at the...

Big Fish Small Pond Thoughts as of 10/12/23 Someone made an offhanded comment about how I thrive being a big fish in a small pond, and after some more reflection, I realized this to be more of an accurate assessment than this individual could have realized. This post will be relatively short given there were a few examples that came to mind, but I felt the rabbit hole of thought warranted sharing and reflecting on a bit more deliberately. As I have attempted to be more thoughtful about language, how I present myself in the world, and, perhaps to a fault, how I am perceived by others, there have been more and more moments like this where I can find something profound in simplicity. Perhaps the term profound is a bit of a stretch and self-aggrandizing, but nonetheless, there are these little turns of phrase that I think about a bit more deeply than I would have historically, and sometimes a small tweak in language or emphasis will cause me to rethink some of my default mind states. My li...

9000 Days Reflecting on mortality as of 10/3/2023  Sunday 9/24/2023, was my 9000th day outside the womb. You can see that it is now a week and a half later, so I would take all of the below with a grain of salt. As a function of a number of events in my life, the past few years have led me to stoic philosophy where I first encountered the concept of Memento Mori, or “remember you must die.” At face value, this seems quite morbid and almost too extreme. Preaching that it is actually beneficial to keep death at the top of mind is unorthodox, I would argue increasingly so in an era where death is pretty far removed from day-to-day life. As advances in medicine and travels from the farms to the cities have continued to compound over the years, it seems that death itself is almost a thing of the past. I would say that this is a topic for another post - namely the fact that as we have had scientific advances and ways of explaining the natural world without invoking the supernatural we ha...

Reflecting on Routine Some thoughts on routine as of 9/19/2023 The irony of this post is that I am trying to get into a routine of writing on Sundays, and yet put off this writing until Monday Tuesday. The good news is that I have another opportunity this week to have some better discipline! I will say at the outset that I am biased in favor of routine. Perhaps it is a product of school and playing various sports that followed a regular weekly schedule for the majority of my life to date, but I think in a world in which the only constant/guarantee is change, having something relatively stable to fall back on is quite useful. Once I hung the cleats up, I realized that I had a lot of unstructured time for the first time in my adult life, and I had to figure out how I wanted my days to look. A year is made up of months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and so I started with a morning routine in the spring of my senior year. Taking full advantage of the time between football/academic/social re...

Time-Being These are my thoughts on 8/27/23 (ish) It is ironic that I started this post on 8/27 with a few snippets of ideas, and it is now the evening of 9/13 before going to sleep after a ~13-hour day that I am getting the chance to finish an initial train of thought. I do really enjoy when I am able to get moments of stillness and clarity and step away from the constant distractions and task switching that unfortunately are making up the bulk of my day-to-day, and so I think that the concept of time management and the limited amount of time we spend on this earth have been particularly salient in a lot of the media that I have come across. It has been a few weeks now since the initial insight was sparked, but I want to get into the habit of writing some of my thoughts on various subjects relatively close to real-time in an unfiltered sort of way to try and capture some of the things that are on my mind. This has been helpful in journaling or even on past iterations of blogs which I ...

Navigating the Path to Lasting Contentment: Unraveling the Threads of Happiness Embarking on this new endeavor, I find myself grappling with the concept of happiness and its elusive nature. Thoughts as of 8/6/2023 Defining Happiness and Its Transient Nature: The notion of happiness occupies my thoughts, particularly in the spheres of my career, physical well-being, and relationships. Amidst the sea of content, podcasts, and literature, one word prevails: happiness. However, the essence of this word transcends mere fleeting emotions. It resonates with virtues like flourishing, purpose, and inner peace, forming the essence of eudaimonia – a Greek concept of profound well-being. Resistance: The Prodigal Force In my pursuit of articulating these contemplations, I've confronted resistance. A formidable adversary, resistance emerges when I confront meaningful tasks. Yet, I've come to realize that its presence signifies the significance of my endeavor. Drawing inspiration from Steven ...